Mother’s Day Gift Guides: Choosing Products to Pitch

Back when I first started my PR firm (in the mid 1990s!) there were no online publications, or digital newsstands. While email was gaining in popularity, all pitches had to be done in person, via phone, via fax (can you imagine?), or by mail!

I remember being cheerfully scolded by an editor for emailing him ideas for a story (what a notion!) he didn’t want his email account being bogged down in what he considered “too much stuff” which is still pretty much the prevailing attitude today.

I’m relating this story not because I love spinning yarns, but because the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I started by little PR firm back in San Francisco representing architects, interior designers, furniture brands, and a handful of builders and subcontractors.

There were only a few places that architects and decor types could hope to have their work see the light of day: local newspaper Home sections, and national newspapers like the New York Times or Washington Post; domestic consumer decor magazines: Elle Decor, Metropolitan Home, Architectural Digest, Home, Better Homes & Gardens, House Beautiful (yes, a total of 5!); a handful of trade magazines; and local style magazines.

The big win was always getting into Met Home or House Beautiful. Working with such a drastically small number of media outlets in a niche like design taught me early that in order to be successful, you have to be media aware before you pitch your product or story idea.

The big magazines were wildly competitive, even though they catered to different styles. Met Home, Architectural Digest and Elle Decor were very high end and cutting edge; House Beautiful and Better Homes focused on median priced homes that always had a little twist, but were relatively affordable.

A PR pro who wanted to maintain a relationship with powerful editors at these magazines wouldn’t dream of presenting anything less than a fully modern cutting edge design to Met Home - and even then you’d be very careful about which editor to approach. You’d have to know their look, and you’d have to know what trends were in the works before you picked up the phone.

Be careful about what you pitch and to whom. Know your audience, AND your audience’s audience.

Since the 90’s, an untold number of "portals of content” have entered the stage. For beauty there are countless places for products to find their way onto a page:

Physical magazines at checkouts: there are not many of these anymore. The magazines you usually see are SIP’s (Special Interest Publications) that are produced by major media but generally focus on one theme and are either one-offs, or come out seasonally. A small irony is that the majority of Americans still prefer paper magazines to reading digital print online. According to Fortune Magazine: “Most magazine readers still prefer print. In a YouGov survey, only 29% of readers in the United States and 18% in the U.K. said they prefer reading magazines online.”

Digital Magazines: there are magazines on Apple News, Magzter, Issuu, Flipsnack, Fliphtml, and Pressreader created by both major media and small players.

Major media websites and top influencer blogs: these represent a good share of what we see at the surface of press clips and are the source of most gift guides and shopping columns.

All these publications create gift guides, some with more influence than others - and, much as those powerful magazine editors from ‘90’s, all have fairly narrowly defined products that they look for.

Picking out products for gift guide pitching requires more depth than merely popping some pictures of your newest rollouts into an email and steam rolling them over 1000’s of writers enmass via one of the editorial press servers. (This is known as splattershot pitching and has become more of the norm with the advent of media list servers).

To start, visualize how you’d most like to see your product featured.

Most gift guides include a long list somewhat similarly aligned gifts. There could be anywhere from 10 to 50 items on a long scroll. Your brand usually isn’t grouped with direct competitors, but it might be. Is this the ideal situation for your brand? Or are you more interested in a smaller list in an elite publication that caters to women in their mid 30’s with a larger than average disposable income?

If you have a more refined gift guide audience in mind, make a short list of media that caters to the type of reader that most closely aligns with your brand. This list should be no longer than 20 titles.

For digital shopping columns, chances are good that last year’s Mother’s Day gift guide will be updated by the same editorial team and republished for 2026. Popular Mother’s Day gift guide themes that resonate well with readers from the past are tried and tested gold for publishers. They’ll move products off the list that didn’t perform well and add on new products that have the right metrics for their guide. Study last year’s guides and confirm on Linkedin if the same editors/writers are still at the publication, and are again working on the guide. If so, consider the colors, spirit, and style of the items they chose before. Take a look at the same items listed on Amazon (if applicable) to see what types of reviews they received. Do you have products with similar reviews? Many editors require a minimum of 500 positive reviews on Amazon in order to include the product on their list. They want demonstrable sales appeal and good SEO value. This is where merely pitching your newest product can fall short. If you don’t have enough reviews to qualify with a new product, consider your hero product that’s had steady sales for years and good track record of consumer reviews.

Physical magazines such as local style publications are still in play as of this writing (early March) and they will have a much more nailed down idea of what they want to feature on their pages. Their metrics are far different than shopping columns, with the onus on the look and feel of a product, as well as whether or not a local retailer carries the item so their readers can flock to that store to purchase. Local magazines are fixated with creating avenues for advertising revenue, and as such mentioning a store that is either a current advertiser, or could become an advertiser is an important element of the editorial process. As such, pick out products that your retail customers carry and confirm that they will have enough on hand before pitching to the local magazine.

Digital Magazines of the smaller variety are far more focused on providing their readers with value (not that the types of media above aren’t - they just have a different formula). Small style magazines with national readership like Modeliste, Athleisure, Gladys, Victoria, and a lot of bridal media that you find on Issuu and Fliphtml adhere to a cozier set of metrics. They’re advertiser driven and as such they hold their reader’s interest by producing pretty pages that are the stuff of vision boards and 5 year plans. They know their readers look out for new issues and will linger over each and every page, often pinning ideas and saving photos. The products you pitch here should be presented in a visually stunning way. White backgrounds but with good props added into the mix. Your newer rollouts and special Mother’s Day kits will go nicely with the editorial makeup of most of these publications, of which there are quite a few.

Televised gift guides such as the shopping segments you see on The Today Show and Good Morning America are a widely mixed bag. Depending on who is curating the collection of products, they could be purely paid, or they could be a personal favorite of the guest contributor appearing on the show. This is an area that offers the greatest rewards but has the narrowest opening in terms of the opportunities available to the average brand.

Many local lifestyle shows are 100% sponsored by the brands you see displayed on the show. These are the shows you see on your local news channel that usually run mid morning. They charge on average $2500 to $6000 for an on-air spot that lasts a few seconds.

Daytime talk show gift guides such as The View, Live with Kelly & Mark, and The Drew Barrymore Show often exchange product for air time. This means the producers go out in search of the hottest wow factor gifts. In exchange for air-time the brand gifts the entire studio audience and a few people at home (usually about 60 - 100 pieces) with the product or products. These are usually high value products such as car seat and stroller combos that retail for over $900 each, or the latest electronic must-haves. They occasionally include smaller products such as high end candles or cosmetics in a swag bag that they feature on their websites. Again they will require about 100 pieces by comped to the show in exchange for promotional consideration. Again, they are looking for wow factor gifts … items that send out a big squeal of joy when revealed.

When choosing what to pitch for Mother’s Day gift guides you’ll need to make a short list of media and gift guides you’d like to be featured in.

For digital shopping columns study what they’ve published in 2023’s Mother’s Day guides. A good bet is that many of the same products will be back for an encore. Figure out which of your products aligns most closely with the products they’ve chosen in the past by researching their Amazon status, Instagram followers, and other public facing details (such as what celebs use the product).

For local physical magazines research which stores carry your products in a given demographic area and pitch products that those stores carry to magazine writers and editors. There are thousands of local style magazines to reach out to, and depending on how widespread the retail footprint of your brand, this should be the first place you start.

For digital magazines aesthetic will be key to winning space on their gift guide pages. Study their style and pick out products that most closely align with their style.

For televised gift guides on talk shows, pitch your flashiest most awe inspiring gift ideas.